Tag: Google Drive

Adding a device into the classroom is like Christmas for the students; there’s excitement, adventure, curiosity and ultimately distraction from the learning goal of the day.

I thought I had prepared for that. I thought I had our first days with the iPad well-planned, anticipating student reaction and guiding it. The reactions 30 young, eager, curious minds, however, can’t always be predicted. It’s a language class, so we began by reviewing and practicing iPad-related vocabulary in the target language. I want my students to be able to talk about their “tool” in the target language, to maintain that focus in the classroom. We then distributed the iPads and practiced using the iPad vocabulary in context: functions, placement, actions, etc. We then did our first assignment with the iPad.

Our first iPad assignment involved students videotaping themselves practicing a dialog. We had been working on the related vocabulary in class, adding the related skills, and were then practicing it all in context. Students were to record themselves. listen to themselves and edit or redo as necessary until they were proud of their final product. My hope was for students to upload their videos to their shared Google Drive folders (a topic for another post). There was so much technical need during the period, that I decided to have them Airdrop their videos instead. Airdrop is fast and convenient for the students. A couple more steps for me, but easier for them. They loved it – too much!

Let’s talk about Airdrop and other technical difficulties. Deep breaths. 30 Students all asking for my help at once. It often doesn’t matter how many times you say and write the directions, there are so many questions students have! Problem solving, even in this generation, wasn’t one of the strengths this group had. My name was called from all directions of the classroom minute after minute. It wasn’t even because students had problems with how to film – experience with their phones made them fairly adept at this. Most issues revolved around not being able to login to Google Drive, hence the switch to Airdrop (before deploying the iPads, students had gone to their District assigned Google Drive accounts and set up shared folders for the class). The main issue was that students hadn’t logged into our District network, so of course the sharing wasn’t working. A number of iPads were defaulting the an incorrect network that kept logging them out of the District network. Logging in was part of the directions, but the thrill of the new “toy” distracted students from those directions. That meant I was caught going from student to student, from one side of the classroom to the other, “fixing” issues that shouldn’t have been issues. In the meantime, students had discovered the “fun” of Airdrop and begun Airdropping Photo Booth pictures of themselves.

Did students get their assignment done? Did they enjoy this format? Have they asked to do it again? Yes. Yes to all of that. For me, however, it was an exhausting experience. After stepping back I could see that just because they are having fun, doesn’t mean the students aren’t learning. Even though they were Airdropping and using Photo Booth apart from the assignment, they were still learning how the device worked and sharing their knowledge with each other.

Maybe I’m too hard on myself. A part of myself thinks perhaps I should have gone the opposite direction and not planned anything and watched where students would take themselves. Ultimately I still think that students need to be guided towards the appropriate doors. That’s part of their digital education. I believe we have an obligation to guide students through the digital craze. Planning is the key. Anticipating student reaction and actions is also important.

Maybe my experience will help someone else in their journey into a 1:1 program. Maybe my continued experiences will also help.